How It All Began
Dicing Time for Gladness is unusual in that its origin can be traced to a single moment. It was Monday, March 8th, 2010, and my wife Trish and I were driving north on US 1 on our way back from a long weekend in Key West. We had just stopped to sample “The World's Greatest Key Lime Pie” at Manny & Isa's Kitchen in Islamorada. As we were leaving, she casually suggested that I write a story that combined steampunk with burlesque. It seemed like a pretty good idea, so I grabbed a napkin out of the glove compartment – she was driving – and started to brainstorm character names. Victoria da Vinci was the first one I came up with, followed by Constance Blumfield / May Bloom.
And thus did what would eventually become Dicing Time for Gladness originate. It started as a rough 20-page short story that opened in Chicago and ended in Paris with an epilogue set in the Jazz Age.
I had recently finished reading Devil in the White City by Erik Larson as well as Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott, so the late 1890s in general and Chicago in particular emerged early as a clear choice for the setting. Victoria’s gold-rush backstory owes a great deal to the wonderful book Good Time Girls by Lael Morgan. Mary Roach’s fabulously entertaining book Spook contains a lot of information about the spiritualist craze that began in the 1840s and reached its frenzied apex in the 1870s, and this was very helpful in developing the character of “The Uncanny, Uncageable” Fiona Phinea (whom we meet in the second book). Victoria’s early “air-show,” Duke Spué Mynöd’s Flying Dolls, and the manner in which Righty became involved with it, was strongly inspired by the true story of Charles Broadwick’s World Famous Aeronauts, and here I drew heavily upon the excellent book Tiny Broadwick: The First Lady of Parachuting by Elizabeth Whitley Roberson. The brilliant Rereading Sex by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz was very helpful in seeking an understanding of Victorian-era American politics and culture.
The manuscript expanded logarithmically as I continued to work on it, and it soon became apparent that I was dealing with a novel. As it grew, I realized it actually wanted to be three novels – Dicing Time for Gladness, set almost entirely in Chicago in 1899, Crass Casualty, set mostly in Paris the following year, and finally Hate’s Profiting, which picks up in the aftermath of World War I.
Originally, the focus of the entire plot was Victoria herself. Constance soon emerged as the preeminent reference point as the project evolved, however, acting as a surrogate for the reader, offering a perspective through which the truth behind the Daughters of Aphrodite can be discovered in stages. Details originally included in the opening exposition migrated to the end to become reveals. As a narrative device, Constance also came to represent the Soul of the Age, torn between the Old World and the New World. Ultimately, that became the central theme of the first book: Constance was emblematic of the United States itself. (But that’s a subject for another blog post.)
The title of all three novels and the name of Victoria’s aerostat are all references to a Thomas Hardy sonnet called “Hap,” published one year before the events of Dicing Time for Gladness. It ponders themes of nihilism and randomness in a cold, harsh, indifferent universe. It seemed like the kind of thing Victoria would have liked.
Perhaps ironically, the word “burlesque” is never actually spoken in any of the books. Even though the word did exist in that era, its connotative flavor was very different at that time, and generally conjured up images of musical theater, raunchy comedy, acrobats, magicians, jugglers, political satire and other such elements, often with an exotic dancer as the final act. (The focus didn’t shift towards striptease as the primary attraction until the 1920s, with the Golden Age of Burlesque peaking in the 1930s.) I felt like Victoria probably wouldn’t have described her show using that term in 1899, so I left it out.
The first installment, Dicing Time for Gladness, was published three years and eight months after Trish proposed the concept. She was my essential, indispensable source of support throughout the process. I never could have done it without her.
And thus did what would eventually become Dicing Time for Gladness originate. It started as a rough 20-page short story that opened in Chicago and ended in Paris with an epilogue set in the Jazz Age.
I had recently finished reading Devil in the White City by Erik Larson as well as Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott, so the late 1890s in general and Chicago in particular emerged early as a clear choice for the setting. Victoria’s gold-rush backstory owes a great deal to the wonderful book Good Time Girls by Lael Morgan. Mary Roach’s fabulously entertaining book Spook contains a lot of information about the spiritualist craze that began in the 1840s and reached its frenzied apex in the 1870s, and this was very helpful in developing the character of “The Uncanny, Uncageable” Fiona Phinea (whom we meet in the second book). Victoria’s early “air-show,” Duke Spué Mynöd’s Flying Dolls, and the manner in which Righty became involved with it, was strongly inspired by the true story of Charles Broadwick’s World Famous Aeronauts, and here I drew heavily upon the excellent book Tiny Broadwick: The First Lady of Parachuting by Elizabeth Whitley Roberson. The brilliant Rereading Sex by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz was very helpful in seeking an understanding of Victorian-era American politics and culture.
The manuscript expanded logarithmically as I continued to work on it, and it soon became apparent that I was dealing with a novel. As it grew, I realized it actually wanted to be three novels – Dicing Time for Gladness, set almost entirely in Chicago in 1899, Crass Casualty, set mostly in Paris the following year, and finally Hate’s Profiting, which picks up in the aftermath of World War I.
Originally, the focus of the entire plot was Victoria herself. Constance soon emerged as the preeminent reference point as the project evolved, however, acting as a surrogate for the reader, offering a perspective through which the truth behind the Daughters of Aphrodite can be discovered in stages. Details originally included in the opening exposition migrated to the end to become reveals. As a narrative device, Constance also came to represent the Soul of the Age, torn between the Old World and the New World. Ultimately, that became the central theme of the first book: Constance was emblematic of the United States itself. (But that’s a subject for another blog post.)
The title of all three novels and the name of Victoria’s aerostat are all references to a Thomas Hardy sonnet called “Hap,” published one year before the events of Dicing Time for Gladness. It ponders themes of nihilism and randomness in a cold, harsh, indifferent universe. It seemed like the kind of thing Victoria would have liked.
Perhaps ironically, the word “burlesque” is never actually spoken in any of the books. Even though the word did exist in that era, its connotative flavor was very different at that time, and generally conjured up images of musical theater, raunchy comedy, acrobats, magicians, jugglers, political satire and other such elements, often with an exotic dancer as the final act. (The focus didn’t shift towards striptease as the primary attraction until the 1920s, with the Golden Age of Burlesque peaking in the 1930s.) I felt like Victoria probably wouldn’t have described her show using that term in 1899, so I left it out.
The first installment, Dicing Time for Gladness, was published three years and eight months after Trish proposed the concept. She was my essential, indispensable source of support throughout the process. I never could have done it without her.
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Upside-down, Inside-out, and Backwards
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